Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Dancing on the Cliff

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mossSo here we are again, dancing on the edge of the cliffs, Fools that we are, watching the sun set on an old year and rise on a new one.  Like Janus the Roman god, two-faced, we look back at what has been and look forward to what will be, simultaneously embodying the present moment.

What amazing creatures we are, Bright Ones!  We carry within us this unbounded capacity for hope and healing, for starting again at tabula rasa, that old blank slate.  Oh, the old stuff lingers, like those lines of ancient vellum documents that re-appear after they’ve been scraped clean and re-written, ghosts of past that linger, but don’t overpower the new text.

One of my first remembered dreams of 2013 was a word rather than an image, the word Palimpsest, the term to describe those old re-used vellum texts that have given scholars the delight of being able to research two texts in one.  I won’t deny that this past year’s fresh text has had its bumpy bits, its painful plot twists at times, but there has been so much light and love, there have been so many epiphanies and mountain views, so many new friends and thoughts and ideas.

(In these twelve nights of Yuletide, I have again been listening more acutely to my dreams.  So far, the thing that stands out most clearly is something vague about The Wild Boys of Raccoon Hollow.  I’m not feeling the spiritual depth of that one just yet.  I’ll keep listening.)

Thank you, Bright Ones, for sharing the journey, for reading my lines here and there.  I wish you many bright spots of sunlight on your path, and challenges enough to make you know your true strength.  Oh, and dreams that give you vision for the next step.

Gratitude List:
1.  This phrase that someone used today: “The intimate magic of motherhood.”  Isn’t that satisfying?
2.  Joseph Brodsky, and Alex Estes’ review of his “1-Jan-65” poem.  It enlivens the literary critic within me.
3.  Knowing my work.  Refining the vision.
4.  All that we have been and all that we will be, but mostly, who we are right in this exact moment.
5.  I have said it before, but it bears repeating on the cusp of the New Year: You.  Oh, Bright Ones, You.

May we walk in Beauty!

Vigil

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Gratitude List:
1.  All those hugs tonight.  Alvarez, Alvarez, Alvarez, Johnsen!
2.  The body knows how to heal itself.  Someone I love dearly went under the surgeon’s knife today.  All will be well.  The body knows how to heal itself.
3.  Sage and witness.  Commemorating, as a community, the terrible massacre of the Conestogas 250 years ago.   Grateful for community turnout, for sage, for vigil.
4.  Have a Heart–our current version of Go Fish!
5.  Completing projects.

May we walk in Beauty!

Rocks and Light

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Gratitude List:
1.  Necessary Conversations: Heavy, beautiful, powerful, sad, life-giving
2.  Music with the Family: Val’s fiddle, “Helpless and Hungry” behind “What Child is This?”, Isaiah’s clear voice singing “No Wind at the Window,” and “The Lord Bless You and Keep You”
3.  Maklubbi.  However it is spelled, it was a delicious Christmas dinner.  And wonderful wine.   And the figgy pudding.  Always the figgy pudding.
4.  Dutch Blitz.  I am getting so slow.  I need to practice, if I am to keep up with these young people.
5.  You.  You.  You.

May we walk in Beauty.  And Light.  So much Light.

Oh, and rocks.  #6 is Rocks.  Susquehanna’s rocks.  Hezza’s rocks.  Goldfinch’s rocks.  The Apache Tear that I wear at my heart.

Illumination

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Tanka

The fields are open
to the moon and falling snow,
an old, well-worn book
the moon reads through shadows
before she drifts off to sleep.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Sharing lists of favorite books
2.  Mary Oliver’s Red Bird
3.  That garlicky guacamole my mom made–if that doesn’t send this cold running, I don’t know what will
4.  Moments of illumination
5.  Fairy Tales

May we walk in Beauty

The Marker

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

(on the day of the massacre of the people of the Conestoga 250 years ago)

Come with me now, Bright Souls
and we’ll sit in a circle together.
Silently a while.  Then we talk.

Light six candles
for the people of the longhouse
who died that wintry dawning.

The air is filled already
with too many words.
The day carries so many mutterings
on the wind, on the wings
of the vulture, drifting
above the broken fields.

Sheehays, Wa-a-shen,
Tee-kau-ley, Ess-canesh,
Tea-wonsha-i-ong,
Kannenquas.

If we are to keep awake,
to live in the place
where the heart stays open,
then perhaps we must look
into the teeth of the story.
Together we gaze at those shadows.
Together we speak their names.
Together we listen for the sparrow’s call.

At the place of the great stone
I did not speak their names.
I left my shell there at that place
in the glittering sun.

Some days I cannot bear the darkness,
but I will close my eyes and sing
while you keep vigil near me.
And when you falter, too,
I will have found the strength renewed
to witness the tale while you sing to me.

Perhaps you will not believe me
when I tell you: As I drove
that road toward the River,
six deer ran across blue shadows
cast by afternoon sun on snow,
over the fields to the road.
They paused a moment to watch
the golden fish of my car approach,
then slipped across Indian Marker Road
and were gone, past the still pond
and into a fringe of wood.

2013 December 105

Gratitude List:
1.  Deer running through blue shadows on a snowy field
2.  The winter slant of light, sparkling on snow
3.  Roasted Brussels Sprouts, and radishes and turnips and potatoes and carrots
4.  Snails.  Who would have thought I would love snails so?  Now that the fish has died, the snails provide much more entertainment than I would have expected.  The big blue one has doubled its size in two weeks’ time.  Their antennae are swirly.
5.  Learning to listen, to wait

May we walk in Beauty.

Motherline

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2013 December 087

Gratitude List:
1.  The light will return, the light will return, the light will return.
2.  Vegetables harvested from right out of the snows
3.  Nate Willing’s hot sauce.  I think this is an appropriate time for an O.M.G.  Sublime.  On scrambled eggs for breakfast and quesadillas for supper.
4.  So much love.  So much light.
5.  The Motherline.
I am Beth Weaver-Kreider,
daughter of Ruth Slabaugh Weaver,
daughter of Lura Lauver Slabaugh,
daughter of Mary Emma Graybill Lauver,
daughter of Elizabeth Shelley Graybill,
daughter of Lydia Gingrich Shelley,
daughter of Elizabeth Light Gingrich,
daughter of Mary Dohner Light,
daughter of Anna Landis Dohner,
daughter of Fronica Groff Landis,
daughter of Susanna Kendig Orendorf Groff,
daughter of Elsbeth Meili Kundig (?),
daughter of Anna Barbara Bar Meili,
daughter of Barbara Biedermann Bar (born 1580 in Hausen, Switzerland).  Thanks for starting up the conversation again, Sarah Preston.

May we walk in Beauty!

Resistance and the Giveaway Gnome

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Before I had children, no one told me how sneaky I would have to become as a parent.  How, in order to keep the house from folding in on itself from all the doodads and detritus and general junk accumulated at an alarming rate by the wee ones I would need to make regular trips through the house when the children are away or asleep in order to gather up bits and pieces and odds and ends to toss or give away.  How the sound of that sweet little wonder-filled voice in the breezeway next to the giveaway boxes would strike frustration to the core of me: “Oh!  I remember this!”  This being a hard plastic Garfield tchotchke with a head that rotates on some sort of spring mechanism, only the spring part is broken, and the nameplate on the base has begun to wear off, leaving the letters “arf.”  (Please don’t dig any deeper in that bag, please. . .)

So what a surprise today when we were cleaning and tidying, and all of a sudden my gadget-obsessed seven-year-old was handing me his entire collection of broken calculators, and the four-year-old gave away all the Angry Birds kitsch he scored at a birthday party two weeks ago.

These kids are so often little walls of resistance, using every tool they can create to define their own parameters, to make their choices their own.  I am finding that there’s an exquisite balance here–to nurture and bless their autonomy while also giving them the boundaries they need in order to thrive.  Sometimes my refusal to budge creates greater walls, creates defiance.  And sometimes their resistance is simply rote reaction, and all they need is a little push from me.

I don’t like to be forced to give up my stuff either, but occasionally I would be glad of a little gnome wandering through my house at night and packing off a handful of projects that haven’t seen the light of day for months or years.  She just needs to get them out of the house before I wake up and see them: “Oh!  I remember this!”

Gratitude List:
1.  Being considered for the job, even if it’s not my skill set.
2.  Cleaning out
3.  Clearing up
4.  Seed Catalogs
5.  Nothing is Written in Stone

May we walk in Beauty.

Fare Well

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I was born after the death of JFK, so I could never quite understand the depth that a single news event carried in the lives of my parents’ generation. . .until the day I joined the world in observing a vastly different news story, one of great hope and joy, the day Nelson Mandela was released from jail.  There’s a crispness and a clarity to the memory, a sense of knowing I was living in one of those historical moments that would carry significance beyond the mere opening of a prison door.

As a college student, my developing political and social consciousness gained focus and momentum from the worldwide pressure upon the South African government to do the right thing.  It was my first experience with choosing to boycott corporations which put their bottom line before human rights.  It was our opportunity as young activists to put our budding social consciences to work.

It’s not grief, really, that I feel at his death today at the age of 95.  We knew the day was coming.  Indeed, there were premature reports of his death only a few months ago.  It’s been rehearsed.  Nevertheless, a great light has gone from among us, a powerful chapter has come to a close, a good man has gone on.

Gratitude List for the gifts Mandela gave the world:
1.  For his unswerving commitment to human rights and equality, to basic human dignity.
2.  For his tenacity in the face of injustice, great hardship, and terrible wrong.
3.  For his firm choice to choose a path of reconciliation and peace rather than vengeance and retribution, even when vengeance seemed his right.
4.  For the way he turned our minds and hearts towards the work of creating a more just world.
5.  For his humanity and humility.

May we walk in Beauty.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” –Nelson Mandela

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” –Nelson Mandela

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.” –Nelson Mandela

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” –Nelson Mandela

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”–Nelson Mandela

<Quotations found on GoodReads>

In the Hall of the Disappearing Creatures

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<Prompt 30:  Last One.  Write a Disappearing Poem> An interesting piece of synchronicity: someone declared today (Nov. 30) to be the International Day of Remembrance for Lost Species.

One black rhino falls on the Savannah.
Deep in shadowed jungles,
the Formosan clouded leopard
winks out of time.
Poor old Lonesome George,
the last Pinta Island Tortoise,
slowly ages to stone.  And gone.
Celia, the last Pyrenean Ibex, taking
one last breath beneath a quivering acacia
on a windswept, sunset plain.

The Japanese river otter.  The Liverpool Pigeon.
The Eastern cougar.  Javan Tiger.  Golden Toad.

The Ivory-Billed. . .don’t say it.
The Ivory. . .no, not yet.
Keep that door open yet a little longer.
Listen for the wheep and cluck
deep in the swamp.  Watch
for that flash of white through the mosses.

2013 November 210
From the State Museum of PA

Gratitude List:
1.  Hope
2.  Warmth
3.  Light
4.  Art
5.  This moment.

May we walk in Beauty.

Commercial

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<Prompt 29: Write a Commercial Poem> Oy.  I’m tired.  Here’s a toss-off:

Face it.  You’re not good enough,
not clean enough, not nice enough,
not beautiful.

You need more stuff to fill you up,
to ease your grief, to fit your need,
to fill the hole.

Don’t you feel that blinding ache,
relentless need, the restless urge,
desire’s pull?

Just buy more stuff, just do your part
to keep the Corporation in the black,
to meet our goals.

Gratitude List:
1. Venus!  She is so big and bright she makes me want to grab my frankincense, saddle up the camels and slouch off to Bethlehem with the other rough beasts.
2. Day trip to the State Museum of PA.  We got a membership to all the state museums for half price, and free parking for the day, to boot.  It was wonderful and educational.
3. The Bird People of the Susquehannocks.  Carved as glyphs into the rocks into the middle of the river, wings spread and soaring.  Carved standing into shell and bone, wings folded, beaked faces watchful.
4. Reading Anne of Green Gables to the boys.
5. You.  Have I said that yet? I am so very grateful for you.

May we walk in Beauty.